Miracolo

«I live without living in myself», wrote Teresa of Ávila. Perhaps this is the Miracle: that a heart can become a dwelling place for absence; that the cold in Purcell’s music can still hold the breath of someone who has died; that, in Monteverdi, a fragile prayer rises from a vale of tears.

Some return to the frost, some call out to a lost homeland, while others, like Sances, entrust the faithfulness of a name to the passing years.

And then there are two mothers, portrayed by Merula and Liguori, bending over their cradles, with the distant shadow of the cross in their eyes. Their hands know what reason does not dare to say: every life is already a departure, and yet every life deserves to be rocked by a lullaby.

Music then becomes a gentle place of rest, and even the heavens fall silent to hear a mother’s voice singing.